


Small Beginnings

by VespidaeQueen



Category: Avengers (Comics), Tales to Astonish
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:30:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VespidaeQueen/pseuds/VespidaeQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Janet van Dyne finds her father dead in his lab, she takes it upon herself to find a way to avenge him.</p><p>A short rewrite of Janet van Dyne's origin story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in parts about one year ago, when I still had only rudimentary knowledge about Jan and Marvel in general. This is based off of Tales to Astonish #44, but with a number of changes. The nature of the creature from Kosmos has been changed, as well as some of the explanations for how things occurred. This is also not complete - specifically, it's missing the actual confrontation with the creature, though for purposes of this story it follows the 2011 rewrite origin comic, where Janet was the one to actually defeat it. 
> 
> Despite being based out of the comics, the personalities of both Jan and Hank in this story are more informed by Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

 Jan meets him in the lab. Her father introduces them – he’s been going on and on about how amazing this new scientist is and how Dr. Pym’s work will be such a complement to his own.

Now, Jan doesn’t know much about Dr. Henry Pym’s work. Her father said something about ants, which confuses her because her father doesn’t do work with organisms. But her father is very excited about this, and wants her to meet this scientist, so she goes along with him to the lab.

Her first impression of Henry – not Hank then, not to her, not yet – is that he is tall. Quite a bit taller than her, and skinny. Cute, but a bit awkward. His hair is messy and if she had to guess, Jan would say he’d been in the lab for a  _very_  long time.

“Henry, I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet,” her father announces as they come into the room. Her father has a loud, boisterous voice, and Henry looks up from his work and blinks for a moment.

“Oh. Vernon. I was just in the middle of inserting a plasmid into – well, it’s fascinating really, it should cause a mutation that allows for the particles to – did you say someone you want me to meet?” He looks at her for the first time and his eyes go wide. “Oh.”

“Hello, Dr. Pym,” she says, and extends a hand. “Janet van Dyne. I’ve heard a lot about you from my father.”

Henry takes her hand very gingerly, and Jan keeps herself from frowning. She’s not certain what’s wrong, but something about her has put him on edge. “Ms. Van Dyne. Good to…meet you.”

He drops her hand quickly and then turns back to his work. “Vernon, here, you’ll want to see this. I’ve been doing some thinking – treat the cells with the particles. Infusing a body with them could allow for the mass transfer to take place -”

Jan sort of tunes out the rest the conversation, though she does understand some of it. But then her father and Henry are going on about science and their research at a rate which she can’t follow. She wonders why this new scientist was looking at her so strangely.

It’s a long time before she learns that it was because she looks like Maria.


	2. Chapter 2

These are the last words Janet van Dyne says to her father:

“Daddy, I’m going out! Don’t stay up too late with your science!”

Not “I love you,” not anything else which, in the time after his death, she will wish she had said.

She will always wish her last words to him were something else. She will always wish that, in those last minutes they had together, she had told him one more time that she loved him.

What kind of last words to someone are “don’t stay up too late with your science”?

 

*

She’s the one who finds him in his lab, body already gone stiff and cold on the ground. She’d come home late, and hadn’t wanted to bother him except the light had been on in the lab, and she had something she’d wanted to tell him (she doesn’t remember what it is after, but then a lot of details become blurry in the haze of grief that falls), and she’d walked in only to see him there, on the ground.

Dead.

It’s not like with mom - there hadn’t even been a body with mom, and Jan had been so young that she had barely been able to understand what was going on. No body, nothing, just a funeral and her father’s tears.

Now, there’s a body there, on the ground, and it looks like her father. She goes entirely cold, like her heart has stopped right then and there in her chest, and even as she drops to the ground beside him and presses fingers to his wrist searching for a pulse, she knows that he’s dead.

Jan gets her phone out and calls for help - doesn’t even know if her words are coherent or what exactly she says - and then she waits there, in the lab, until an ambulance or the police or someone comes.

She catches her father’s hand - cold, curled tightly, she can’t even hold it properly - and she just sort of crumples into a heap beside him. Sobs. Her heart hurts like there’s something that’s forced its way into it and is trying to tear it apart from the inside out.

And then - and then - she realizes there is something in her father’s hand.

Jan draws her free hand across her face, at her nose, chokes on a breath, but pulls herself together enough to pry open his his fingers and remove a small USB drive. She doesn’t know the importance, but she thinks - this is what he was working on when he died - and she slips it into her pocket before the police arrive.

 

*

Later, after speaking with the police, after making statements for the press, after being told that she now owns her father’s company, Jan takes the USB with a shaking hand and inserts it into her computer. It’s her father’s research - at least, it’s part of it. She does not have the love for science that her father does - did - but she knows this. The work with gamma rays and Pym particles, collaborative work only made possible with the help of one other scientist employed by her father.

And there are several seconds of video footage, saved on the USB, that never turn up in any other security feed in the lab. Footage from only seconds before he died.

When the coroners report comes in - formic acid and solenopsin in his lungs and blood stream - Jan goes to find Dr. Henry Pym.


	3. Chapter 3

Three days after her father dies, Jan goes to Dr. Pym’s laboratory.

It takes her three days, because the first – when she finds her father, dead in the lab – has only tears and grief and pain in it. The second is a mess as well, but the third – by the third day, she has collected what information she can from her father’s lab and has stared at it in the hours when she isn’t being comforted or speaking to officials or dealing with all the sorts of things that come up after someone dies. She tries to understand her father’s research, tries to remember everything he would go on about when they would eat dinner again, draws on her rudimentary understanding of chemistry and her even more rudimentary understanding of particle physics, and still she does not have a very strong idea of what was going on in his lab.

She does understand two things, though: gamma radiation and Pym particles.

No, she understands more than that. She just doesn’t want to believe the third thing.

So after three days, she goes to Dr. Pym’s laboratory with all the information that she has – including the last few seconds of the security footage that she can barely believe is real – determined to get his help.

Jan is almost a force of nature as she enters his lab; the door is thrown open strongly enough that is bangs, causing him to jump.

“ _Wh_  – oh. Ms. Van Dyne. I…wasn’t expecting you.” He’s looking at her with the same look he gave her when they first met – something almost pained that she can’t quite decipher.

“Jan,” she corrects him, as she has been every time she’s seen him. “I need to talk with you, Dr. Pym.”

“Hank,” he says absently, and glances back at his research. “I’m actually in the middle of something right now, Ms. Van Dyne, if you could just wa -”

“My father is dead.” Only three days out, and it hurts so much to say that. Her heart feels stoppered in her throat and she wants to cry.

“Ah, yes,” Hank says, words fumbling and slow on his tongue. “I…heard. I’m very sorry for your los -”

“My father is dead, and it has something to do with your research,” she says, and the room goes very,  _very_ quiet, save for the hum of the autoclave in the corner.

“You must be mistaken.” Hank is very still, and the look on his face has gone very blank. “My research wasn’t -”

She cuts him off again, because she is going to speak her piece here. “ _Hank_. Please just listen. I know that my father was combining your research on Pym particles with his own research with radiation. I know he was using your theory of mass transfer between dimensions. And I know that three days ago he managed to transfer something from…from elsewhere and that it killed him.”

Hank’s eyes go wide and he spins back to the vials that sit before him on his lab bench.

“That is quite a story, Ms. Van Dye,” he says, ejecting the tip from his micropippette and replacing it with a fresh one. “I am certain that -”

Jaw set, she moves forward. “I want you to look at these files,” she says, and holds the USB drive before him. “If you don’t believe me after seeing these, then I’ll leave. I’ll let Detective Kearns deal with the entire investigation. If you do believe me…then I want your help, Hank.”

“My help?”

Jan nods sharply. “Yes. I want your help finding this thing and dealing with it.”

Hank stares at her, mouth slightly open. Then he shakes himself and slides the drive into his computer. She watches him as he goes through the data, flinches and looks away when he gets to the video footage, and then stands there still as he turns back. Now, his face is full of sorrow and disbelief, and something else that she can’t name.

“Jan,” he says, and his voice is very soft. It’s the first time she can recall him using her first name. “I’m sorry. This is my fault. My research…it caused this.”

Jan squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t have anything more to say, except for one thing.

“Will you help me, Hank?” she asks him, standing there in his lab. He glances back at his computer, the video footage frozen on the image of the creature that had killed her father. He lets out a long breath, then looks back to her.

“Yes. Yes, I can help you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the original story, the creature comes from outer space and follows Vernon van Dyne's gamma radiation ray back to Earth. For this rewrite, I decided to have it come from a combination of Vernon and Hank's research, so that knowing they had been working on something together would be what prompts Jan to seek out Hank.


	4. Chapter 4

She thinks she is prepared for this, but she isn’t. Not at all.

It is not a difficult procedure. Hank injects the modified cells into specific places on her back, cells of another type into her wrists. Then there is something else he does which makes her feel light headed for a moment, and then -

“That is it, Janet,” he tells her, and she pushes herself up. She doesn’t feel much different, just a slight sting at all the points of injection. Jan raises one arm up and looks at her wrist – there is little different, nothing save for very slight inflammation where the cells here placed.

“O-okay.” She bites her lip and swings her legs off the table. “How do – how does this work?”

Hank rubs his hands together almost nervously. “I’ve modified the cells. You should be able to consciously change your size – shrink, if you will. The size change will trigger the, ah, mechanisms which cause the other…modifications. Changes. Ah. Yes.”

Jan frowns, flexes her fingers. “So, I just…think?”

“Yes. Ah, that is how it should work. Concentrate on the size change and – oh, wait, don’t do it yet, you’ll need -” He moves, rummages through a box at the back of his lab. “You see, the particles only affect your body. You will need specially treated fabric if you, um, don’t want –  _here_.” He hands her a garment of black material. “You should put that on, then attempt to change size.”

Jan takes the material, then ducks into the storage closet to change. Outside the door, Hank continues to talk.

“It will be fascinating to see how this will work,” he says, and there is a note of excitement in his voice. “The particles are used in the mass exchange, and they are perfectly safe in human subjects. Granted, you typically need to either inhale them or consume them for the effects to take place, but I’ve determined a method that should allow that step to be bypassed.”

“You’ve tested this on people before?” she asks, adjusting her clothing. It’s an ill fitting smock, something she will have to fix.

“Yes. Well, not the precise treatment that I’ve given you, but I have tested the effects of the particles upon myself, and -”

“On yourself?” She steps out of the storage closet. “That’s a very small sample size. What was your control?”

“You’ll need to concentrate,” Hank says, seemingly ignoring her comment. “Think…small thoughts. I’m not actually certain, but you should be able to -”

She’s already concentrating, thinking, and it takes a moment and then something _shifts_. She feels herself diminishing, evaporating, and it is a rushing feeling which leaves her breathless.

“Oh, it  _worked!”_  Hank is there before her, and he is suddenly very,  _very_  large. Jan sits up, having toppled over onto the ground, and blinks.

_Oh._

The world looks entirely different from here. Dust and dirt on the ground that was unnoticeable before is suddenly magnified. Enlarged.

There is a weight upon her back, and Jan twists to look. Muscles she hasn’t used before contract and dainty, translucent wings upon her back move.

“ _Oh,_ ” she breathes, and moves them again. “Oh, this really happened. I…have  _wings_.”

“How do you feel?” Hank asks, and Jan looks back up at him. “Any odd effects? Nausea? Vertigo?”

“Bit of the latter,” she says. He holds out his hand to her and she blinks again, then steps onto it. He lifts her up to his eye level. “Oh, look, definitely some vertigo there. Lift me a bit slower next time, will you?”

“Sorry,” he says, and sets her down on his desk. “Now, let’s see what you can do. Can you fly? The wings should be the right size to support your weight, unless my calculations were completely off.”

Jan flutters her wings again –  _wings!_  She has  _wings!_  - and it takes her a moment before she can manage to get them to a speed which –  _oh!_  - lifts here off the table my only a few centimeters.

“They’re working!” For that moment, all her grief is wiped away by the elation of being able to  _fly_ , and she grins up at Hank before tumbling back to the tabletop. “Hank, you did it!”

And Hank grins back at her.

There are two things that she wasn’t prepared for – the feel of her body as she rises into the air, supported only by her own wings, and how much she likes it when Hank smiles at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the original story, Jan and Hank both had to either swallow Pym particle capsules to change size or use Pym particle gas - it was only later on that the particles modified their bodies to the point that they could do it without use of external particles. For this, I basically skipped forward to having Jan be able to control the size changes on her own.


	5. Chapter 5

Afterward, after the creature is taken care of, she dreams of her father.

She dreams first of how he was in life – warm, intelligent, smiling at her – and misses him.

“I avenged you,” she tells him. “I did.”

In her dream, he is no longer smiling. And Janet dreams of what she hasn’t let herself think about – to avenge him, she killed. It might not have been a human life, but she killed that creature all the same.

In her dream, he doesn’t thank her.

*

Moth to a flame. That’s idiom, right? Something like that.

She’s not a moth, not soft enough to be a moth. Maybe she was soft enough, once. Before her father died. Before Hank embedded modified cells into her body. Before she fought a creature made of acid and venom and killed it.

She thinks she killed it, at least. It was the first sentient creature she’d killed. Hopefully the only one.

For a moment, when she had dropped the anti-toxin formula on the creature and watched it melt away, she had wondered - would she be a supervillain, not a superhero? Someone so twisted by a need for vengeance that she’d do things that had never seemed fathomable to her before?

Now, though, she knows that she isn’t the former. She doesn’t regret what happened to that thing, that creature that murdered her father, but she isn’t - she fights crime.

Sometimes, Hank gives her this look like he cannot understand why she enjoys it, what they do. Fighting, flying - it’s something out of a comic book, he says once. She doesn’t disagree.

She doesn’t kill again. But she takes to this fighting easily, too easily. In those first months where it is just the two of them, she can think of nothing more that she’d want to do. She may not be good, may not be the best, but she is determined and happy.

When she is shot, when she nearly dies, she thinks for quite awhile that she will never do this again.

She is glad to learn that she is wrong on that account.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mention of her being shot is a reference to Avengers #13 or #14, where the Avengers go up against Count Nefaria (I believe?). Jan is shot in the fight and her lung collapses. Though the Avengers find a way to save her, it's only an issue or two after that that Jan and Hank take their first break from being active team members.


End file.
